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Visual Effects Oscar Shortlist
nurble writes "The short list of films being considered for a best visual effects Oscar was released today. The biggest news is that the final two installments of the Matrix trilogy were snubbed in favor of Universal Studios' "The Hulk," New Line Cinema's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," 20th Century Fox's "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," Universal's "Peter Pan," Buena Vista Pictures' "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," Warner Bros. Pictures' "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and Fox's "X2". Finalists will be announced following the effects "bake-off" on January 21st."
It's interesting to note that a good number of these movies use Pixar's Rendering software. That being said, I am surprised that Finding Nemo is not in the list. Don't they consider animations for the visual effects Osar?
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From the Boston Sun review of M&C:o vies/bal-to .master14nov14,0,6183776.story?coll=bal-artslife-m ovies
"Painstakingly rendered props and computer-generated imagery blend persuasively with a real ship filmed at sea and full-scale models shot in the Baja, Mexico, water tank built for Titanic."
http://www.sunspot.net/entertainment/m
Looks like the majority of the water/ship effects were actually genuine. That impresses me to no end.
The Two Towers and Return of the King are technically not sequels. Tolkien wrote it all as one book, and only split it into three when his publishers told him they couldn't print a book that big.
Not all the water was CG. For half the VFX shots, mainly Asylum's work, they shot real ocean plates and composited the real ship and miniatures onto it. For the storm sequence, they actually sent a crew to Tierra de Fuego to film stormy seas and composite the miniature.
The Apple trailer site even had a featurette on that though it seems they removed it.
ILM did use some CG water for their shots.
Matrix Reloaded was not entered for Oscar consideration to avoid the two movies competing against each other.
Matrix Revolutions was the only one in consideration for the long list.
It's exclusion from the list in favor of T3 is very odd to me, as a visual effects professional. "Revolutions" was clearly superior in number and quality of effects. IMHO
fire
The VFX branch nominates films not only on innovation but on execution as well. Thatr's why films with a great quantity of invisible VFX can get nominated (for example Gladiator).
For MC, real ocean plates were used along with CG water. For more details on the VFX of the film check this:
The Effects Mastery of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Absolutely. ROTK will be robbed if they don't get it.
I guess you don't know how the Academy operates. The VFX Branch (composed of VFX pros) select the 7 Bake-Off finalists and then the VFX membership votes the 3 nominees. But it's the entire Academy membership (actors, producers, directors, etc.) votes on all the winners. Which is why sometimes you have some surprises, upsets and funky selections.
X-Men 2 didn't strike me as actually using all too many rendered effects.
I believe they had over 500 VFX shots nothing to sneeze about done by a variety of studios. Many were of the invisible kind like set extensions (the interior of the X plane, Cerebro was a partial set, Wolverine's claws in many shots, etc.)
Even the lava flows looked quite realistic, and that's something that's fairly difficult to get right, I hear.
Well yes and no. CG fluid dynamics for production are relatively recent (Cast Away, Perfect Storm, etc.). Do remember the CG lava in Shrek. Also there have been other ways to do it. ILM used methacyl (a thick viscous fluid) on a miniature set for Congo. The methacyl was later color corrected and composited on the live action sets.
Overall the ROTK work was extremely impressive and more polished than the previous work. There are some minor rough spots but overall it was superb.
To me, the real problem with the list is not that the last two Matrix movies are not included, but that the Hulk is included.
You do realize the list is picked by a team of VFX pros, the VFX Branch of the Academy, headed by Richard Edlund. There are many reason why the Matrix might not have made it. Maybe all the submission requirements were not submitted on time. WB was going to submit Revolutions anyway so not to split the vote.
Second the Hulk had some of the most innovative VFX work of the year, unfortunately most people don't see it. But the real pros did. You could read the Cinefex coverage.
but I have seen enough trailers of it to be disgusted ... The cinematic previews of it were so bad as to make me actively avoid seeing it ... How can a movie have the best visual effects when they can't even peice together a couple minutes worth of believable trailers? Those trailers have to be the absolutely least believable special effects I have ever seen.
Because Universal fumbled the trailers. Many VFX films use unfinished footage, and even test shots are used because studios need to hype films sometimes even more than 6 months in advance. In this case Universal assemebled the trailers without the knowledge or even input from ILM and producers like Gale Ann Hurd. Shots in the trailers were sped up (for time reasons) and in progress shots. And after all you judge the finished products not the trailers.
Tack on a plastic looking green CG skin to the bad movement
I beg to differ but the Hulk had one of the best skin shaders I've ever seen. If it looks "fake" it's because green on a person looks so unnatural. See a detaqiled photo of him in black and white to see how good it looks (which was done in production to check his look). Some movement did look funky but a lot of that conformed to the comic book.
don't just act like gravity doesn't affect him
Well you would have to see the film to see how great the physics are. The hulk stumbles, sliups, missteps, etc. all over the place.
Or maybe they did and failed miserably; either way, it sucked.
Not according to most pros. Maybe the problem lies with the audience with their preconceived ideas and having no idea to tell good VFX from bad, IMHO ;-).
That shot looked horrifically fake. The audience groaned when they saw it.
Also, it should be noted that Warner Bros. didn't even submit Reloaded for a VFX award. They didn't want the votes to be split between Reloaded and Revolutions.
Visual effects != special effects. Special effects are effects done on the set. Visual effects are effects done in post production. The VFX Oscar has nothing to do with things like the quality of the sets (unless the sets are CG or models added in post).